Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses the famous practice of Hillel the Elder, which we read in the Haggadah:

“When eating the Paschal offering, matza, and bitter herbs on the first night of Passover, he would wrap them all at once and eat them together, because it is stated with regard to the Paschal offering: ‘They shall eat it with matzos and bitter herbs’ (Numbers 9:11), which indicates that these three foods should be eaten together.”

The Maharal (Ner Mitzvah I and Gevuros Hashem 60) explains the meaning of this ritual. The Gemara (Menachos 29b) tells us that this world was created by the letter “Hey” in Hashem’s name Y-A-H, and the World to Come was created by the letter “Yud” in His name. What does this signify? Yud is the smallest letter, representing the smallest point and the absolute one-ness of God, which can only be fully recognized in the World to Come. The current world is the letter Hey, which is composed of the letter dalet and also the Yud as the leg of the letter. The dalet is Gematria 4, which represents the four spatial directions — the material reality. Yet this material world still has God’s oneness hidden but active, with the Yud inside the Hey.

Philosophically, it is challenging to see God’s oneness within the chaos and multiplicity of this world, especially when our subjective experience is suffering and evil. The eating of matzah and marror together is an affirmation of trust that both the slavery — the bitter — and the redemption come from God.

Eichah (3:38) states, “Does not both good and evil come from God?” This verse is subject to some confusion. The words literally translate as: “From the uppermost (God), comes neither evil nor good.” The problem with this reading is that it sounds heretical. The simplest explanation is that the verse is a rhetorical question: “Shall we not say that both the good AND the bad come from God?” — i.e., we must accept His wisdom and judgment. However, there are Midrashic readings with nuanced variations that speak to deep ideas about God’s relationship with evil in the world.

Safra (Bechukosai 4:1) reads the verse differently:

“This came to you by your own hands (for) evil never proceeds from Me. And thus is it written (Eichah 3:38) ‘From the mouth of the Most High there shall not go forth the evils, but the good.’”

The verse is now saying: Don’t blame God for the bad things that happen, because He doesn’t cause them — rather, you yourself caused them. How do we understand this? Let’s see some more sources that spell this out in different ways.

Devarim Rabbah (4:3) seems to imply that God instituted an automatic system of consequences (and so implies Rashi on Eichah ibid), similar to receiving a computer-generated red-light or speeding camera ticket in the mail:

Once God issued the Torah on Mount Sinai, the evil automatically befell those who committed transgressions and reward automatically came to those who behaved virtuously.

Ohr HaChayyim (Shemos 6:2) likewise notes that verses about punishments are phrased in a manner that implies the consequences stem from the evil activity itself and not directly from God. For example: “Wicked comes from wicked men” (I Shmuel 24:14), or “Let your evil reprove you” (Yirmiyahu 2:19), or “And made us melt because of our iniquities” (Yeshayahu 64:6).

Kliy Yekar (Devarim 27:12, 31:17) explains that evil and misfortune arise from God’s withdrawal, not His direct action. That is why by the blessings the verse states: “The following shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people,” while regarding the curses it states: “And for the curse, the following shall stand.” The language is passive — not “to curse.”

The Rambam in the Moreh Nevuchim (III:22) discusses the role and characterization of Satan in Iyov:

“‘The sons of God then came to present themselves before the Lord, and the Satan came also among them’ (chap. 1:6, 2:1). It is not said: ‘And the sons of God and the Satan came to present themselves before the Lord.’ … The words used are these: ‘And the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and the adversary came also among them.’ Such a phrase is only used for one who comes without being expected or invited…”

The Rambam is saying Satan is not considered an active force within the heavenly entourage, but rather arises independently as a result of a kind of neglect. He continues:

“They said in the Talmud as follows: R. Simeon, son of Lakish, says: ‘The adversary (satan), evil inclination (yeẓer ha-ra’), and the angel of death, are one and the same being.’ … Satan implies the notion of turning away (Prov. 4:15). He turns us away from the way of truth, and leads us astray in the way of error.”

Thus, Satan is metaphorical for the entropic destructive forces that overwhelm us and allow us to stray from attachment to God. This is why the Angel of Death, Satan, and the Evil Inclination are considered by Reish Lakish to be one and the same (Bava Basra 16a).

The Rambam (ibid III:12) drives this point home in the strongest terms:

Men frequently think that the evils in the world are more numerous than the good… God is perfect goodness, and that all that comes from Him is absolutely good… The origin of the error is that the ignorant man judges the whole universe based on himself — as if the whole universe exists only for him… If he would consider the whole universe, he would find the truth.

…The numerous evils to which individuals are exposed are due to the defects existing in the persons themselves… We suffer from the evils which we, by our own free will, inflict on ourselves and ascribe them to God… “The foolishness of man perverteth his way, and his heart fretteth against the Lord” (Prov. 19:3).

…It is impossible for man to be free from this species of evil. You will nevertheless find that the evils of this kind are very few and rare… deformed individuals are not one-hundredth, not even one-thousandth part of those that are perfectly normal.

The Rambam’s point is that our very physical existence is a gift from God. Physical existence — by virtue of being generated — must be subject to entropy and degeneration. That is the letter Hey, with the Yud hidden inside.

One might ask the foolish question: If God is omnipotent and all-kindness and goodness, why could He not have made us physical but not subject to entropy? This is similar to the famous paradox: Can God make a stone so big that He cannot lift it? Ralbag (Iyov 7:21) famously answers: The fact that a human cannot crow like a rooster does not make the human inferior, even though the rooster possesses a quality the human lacks. In other words, God cannot make a triangle with four sides, and similarly, God cannot create physicality that is subject to creation unless it is also subject to degeneration. Otherwise, all of existence would be subsumed in God and not subject to any independent function. For humans, that kind of existence would be the same as non-existence.

And, after all, non-existence would definitely ruin our plans for the weekend.